About the Series
Enthusiasts for military historical fiction are almost spoiled for choice for novels set in the Napoleonic era. C. S. Forester set the mark high with his Hornblower series, with Patrick O’Brian rising to that challenge with his brilliant Jack Aubrey novels. Bernard Cornwell’s Creation, Richard Sharpe continues to campaign on land, while Allan Mallinson’s cavalry Captain Matthew Hervey gallops in support.
When read in chronological order, the novels in all of these excellent series follow the career of their hero through the events and campaigns of the turbulent periods they inhabit. Their success in large part is down to painstaking research by their authors, and how they use the information they win from primary sources and the work of historians. They strike the balance between providing enough background fact to satisfy the expert on that era, without boring the general reader looking for a satisfying story peopled by believable characters. Used with the skill employed by any of these authors, the small details of daily life in the period, or military equipment used, help set the scene and bring the story to life.
Through the work of these authors many of us now have some real feeling for what life would have been like on a ship of the line in Nelson’s navy, or to have foot slogged through the Peninsular Campaign, at the same time being richly entertained by the stories told so well. But what about the countless aviation enthusiasts who have read everything they can lay their hands on about the birth of military aviation in the Great War, but still wait for a flying Hornblower or Sharpe?
Until now that is. With Chris Davey’s first novel, The Aviator’s Apprentice, the beginning of a new historical aviation series was set to run and run. Will Turner is a hero for aviation, a pioneer caught up in events. He is an engineer forced to become a soldier as his adopted country is dragged into the First World War. An innocent abroad in the first novel in the series, he is fighting for his life in novel two, Turner’s Flight. By the time the third novel, Turner’s Defense, concludes Will Turner has met and overcome the biggest challenge yet presented to those defending the United Kingdom.
The fourth book in the series, Turner’s Leave, is under development and we are confident that Will Turner will be flying well into the future.